Unfortunately the new version of the Defensio anti-spam plug-in broke my layout so I’ve gone back to Akismet for now. I also installed Kontera on a few sites since Google Adsense is performing way under par on all my of sites these past few months.  We’ll see if Kontera will supplement it well!

Please let me know if anything on the site is broken!

Happy holidays and a happy new year! I hope everyone got what they want this gift giving season!

I received a few e-mails from concerned readers worried about why I disappeared for a couple months without much warning.  I do appreciate the concern and would like to assure everyone that I am back from my short hiatus!

Look forward to more posts coming soon!  In the mean time, Lifehacker featured an article about my DIY Das Keyboard Using a Model M.  Check it out!

PHP5 instead uses the dom extension instead which has more features but isn’t backwards compatible with domxml.

Instead of changing all of my code to be compatible with PHP5 (which is perhaps a better solution), I found a module that basically implements all of the PHP4 domxml functions but using the new dom extension.

All you need to do is to put the provided file, domxml-php4-to-php5.php in the directory of the script (or any directory) and include it at the top of your code with:

<?php require_once(“domxml-php4-to-php5.php”); ?>

A big thanks to Alexandre Alapetite for writing this module!

Basically, he is trying to raise $1000 for the skydive.  Anyone that donates at least a $1 to his cause will be entered in a draw for a whole bunch of sponsored prizes (including mine!).

Currently, the prize pool is worth over $2500 and you only need to donate $1 for a chance to win!

You can contact Sean if you want to sponsor a prize for his competition.  Not only will you get a few backlinks from his blog, he will even print your logo/URL on the shirt that he’s going to wear while skydiving!

Go over to smemon.com and check it out!

A while back I had made a suggestion to them to allow sorting spam comments chronologically by the post to which they refer. Turns out it was already something in the works and it’s magnificent. They provide several ways of finding legitimate comments that were caught by the spam filter without requiring you to browse pages upon pages of comments.

Now if only they can implement an auto-update feature…

I’m sure most readers were not reading this blog right from the very first post so I’ve compiled a list of the best posts (under several categories). I’ve also included the necessary SQL query if you want to do something similar on your own wordpress blog.

Most Viewed (via Google Analytics)

1. Game Break – Best Tower Defense Games – 162,509 views
2. Clever and Creative Outdoor Ads – 154,408 views
3. Starcraft 2 Game Play Footage – 119,238 views
4. Game Break – Best Defend Your Castle Games – 118,747 views
5. How Dirty is Your Computer – 117,093 views

Most Commented On

SELECT comment_post_ID, COUNT( * ) AS num
FROM `wp_comments`
WHERE `comment_type` = ”
GROUP BY comment_post_ID
ORDER BY num DESC

1. 2P Slim Mouse Giveaway Contest – 117 Comments
2. Hindsight is 20/20 – 63 Comments
3. Clever and Creative Outdoor Ads – 43 Comments
4. Defeating My Google Twin – 42 Comments
5. Giveaway – World’s Smallest MicroSD Card Reader – 41 comments

Most Pingbacks

SELECT comment_post_ID, COUNT( * ) AS num
FROM `wp_comments`
WHERE `comment_type` = ‘pingback’
GROUP BY comment_post_ID
ORDER BY num DESC

1. Jon’s Showoff Rankings – 52 Pingbacks
2. Hindsight is 20/20 – 16 Pingbacks
3. Giveaway – World’s Smallest MicroSD Card Reader – 15 Pingbacks
4. mediatemple Coupon and Referral Program – 13 Pingbacks
5. 2P Slim Mouse Giveaway Contest – 13 Pingbacks

Most Popular “How-To” posts

1. How-to: Free Portable Web Development on a USB Drive
2. How-to: DIY Das Keyboard using a Model M
3. How-to: Secure your Traffic using an SSH Tunnel with PuTTY
4. How-to: Automate your SSH Login with PuTTY
5. How-to: Delete Undeletable Files

Site Launches

• New Site Launch: Sujjest.com – Improved eBay Search
• Surf Handsfree – Lazy Web Surfing
• Showoff Rankings – Not just for WordPress
• My Educational Web Directory Initiative

Personal Picks

• Web Hosting Recommendations
• An Evil Way to Increase RSS Stats
• 7 Tips to Make Reading RSS Not Feel like a Chore
• Would You Turn Down $10,000?
• Good Looking Color Themes to Avoid

Interesting to note that the most popular posts have nothing at all to do with web development! Do you have your own favorite post? Anything you’d like to see more of in the coming year? Leave a comment to let me know!

The unique thing about this link train is that all links have the nofollow tag on it — meaning they will be blind to search engines. This is important because certain search engines may frown upon this type of link building strategy (i.e. Google).

Also, by joining the train, you have a chance to win the best-selling book The 4-hour Workweek courtesy of Blogging the Movie!

How to Join the Train

1. Write an original short snippet introduction to avoid duplicate content.
2. Just copy the section between the start and end.
3. Add your 3 favorite blogs with rel=”nofollow” in the link on the code page.
   

   <a href=”http://url.com/” rel=”nofollow” target=”_blank”>URL.com</a>

   This is extremely important to ensure that Google won’t ding us. Make sure you contact the bloggers and insist they participate so they can keep this going.

4. Email your URL of your blog post to Free4hourWorkweek@gmail.com
   [Deadline: 12/31/07 ]

Favorite Blogs
Betshopboy | DerekSemmler | Enkay Blog | MsDanielle | JimiMorrisonsHead | Siteguide.us | Darin.cc | JonLee.ca | Samanathon | MrGaryLee | KellyCho | SusanSuarez | RobertaFerguson | Bloggrrl | TheKingKongBlog | TheBeefJerkyBlog | LifeisColourful | MarketingDeviant | MaleWail | RomanDock | 40hourstogo | TylerCruz | JonathanVolk | Egonitron | SuncoastScribe | Gnaka | WorldOfAngel | MyBlogContest | TheGeekBoys | JoyceBabu | JakelDaily | Internet Marketing Fool | Add your 3 Favorite Blogs here (it is important that you change the link to rel=”nofollow”)

That’s it! Let’s hope this meme will take off like the Technorati faves train!

If you keep a close eye on your RSS count, you’ll notice that it goes up and down every single day. You may also notice that subscriber count generally decreases during weekends. Problogger actually has a good article that answers exactly this so I will summarize it here.

Why does this happen?
The way Feedburner works, they track subscribers in two ways. The first are readers that directly access a feed from a standalone feed-reader. The second are readers that access feeds through a web-based feed reader. In the case of web-based feed readers, they do not directly access your feed, instead the service accesses the feed every so often and pushes new articles to their users.

Feedburner can have an accurate count of how many direct feed accesses there were in a day but they have to rely solely on numbers reported by various web-based readers as to how many of their users subscribe to a particular feed.

Direct Feed Fluctuations
Users that access your feed directly (through a mail client or live bookmarks) will only count as a Feedburner hit if they actually fetched your feed that day. If they had left their computer off or did not open that application on that particular day, they will not be counted as a reader!

Note that visitors using old versions of Firefox may be falsely reported as a RSS reader and this miscount may be further enhanced by a little evil trick.

Web-based Feed Reader Fluctuations
Errors in subscriber numbers can also arise when web-based readers incorrectly report their subscriber numbers or when they don’t report subscribers altogether. Earlier this month there was a day where Google Reader did not report their subscribers and blog owners around the blogosphere panicked.

Second, in my findings from my previous post, it appears that Google stops counting a user 4-5 days after the last time they access a feed. I can only assume other web-based RSS readers do something similar.

Conclusion
If you notice your feed going down over the weekends ,don’t worry because it’s probably one of the reasons above.  It is better to look at the general trend of RSS readership to get a good idea of how you’re doing!

I was very busy last week and was unable to post for almost 7 days. However, this was a good opportunity to take a little look into the inner-workings of Feedburner.

My last post before my little one week time off from blogging was on Tuesday, November 13. Without making any posts, my RSS count stayed steady at around 370 for 4 days and then plummeted by over 100 readers overnight!

Two days later, I resumed blogging and the next day, the RSS count jumped back up to the previous count of about 370 subscribers.

A Literal Interpretation?
If you take a literal interpretation of the RSS count, this would mean that over 100 people unsubscribed from my blog because I had stopped posting for a few days. Then they somehow found out I was posting again and resubscribed immediately. Highly unlikely if you ask me!

A More Likely Hypothesis
Looking at the reader breakdown, it seems that almost all of the 100 subscribers that disappeared were Google Reader (Google Feedfetcher) and Google Desktop subscribers. This would suggest that Google stops reporting a subscriber to Feedburner if they have not accessed a feed 4-5 days.

No Signs of Slowing Down!
Surprisingly, during this posting drought, visitor counts did not drop one bit. In fact, they actually went up! Most of this is search engine traffic though, which is an inherent advantage of blogs — the longer your blog has been around, the more content you have and the more search engine traffic you will get over time.

On another note, I have long since stopped using my evil way of increasing RSS readers but with traffic at an all-time high, it may be worth trying to implement it again to see if it still works.

Goals from Last Month

• Reclaim Alexa ranking of 50,000.
  Instead of reclaiming 50,000 I have dropped to 60,000. How disappointing is that! Looks like I need to be more aggressive in promoting and spreading my content.
• Increase RSS readership above 350
  I have been averaging about 380 RSS subscribers this month, well over my goal!
• Increase Technorati ranking into the top 1,750
  My Technorati ranking has dropped this month to 2,879.
• Maintain a post a day
  I knew this wouldn’t be an easy task and indeed I had written only 26 posts in the last 30 days.
• Hold yet another giveaway contest
  I did manage to hold a giveaway contest a couple days ago in the form of a little game. The winner, Joyce Badu, won a 125×125 button ad spot on this blog for a full 3 months (a $150 value)!

Goals for Next Month

• Pull Alexa ranking over 55,000.
• Increase RSS readership above 400
• Increase Technorati ranking into the top 2,500
• Maintain a post a day (give or take)
  

I’m not trying to be too ambitious next month because like last month, I have a fairly packed schedule. Regardless, I have an exciting project that should be completed before the new year!
I hope everyone else is doing well on their blogs!